Page 70 of Fought it Through the Teeth

Bohdi eases out of him carefully, too carefully, Morgan wants to say, but his mouth isn't cooperating, and settles onto his side and pulls Morgan against him, chest to back, arm slung heavy across his waist. Morgan's ribs ache dully and his body is trembling in the aftershocks and he is sticky and filthy and so thoroughly fucked he can barely keep his eyes open, and he has never been happier in his entire life, and the pathetic simplicity of that is staggering.

"You're the worst," Morgan says into the dark, because someone has to say something and it isn't going to be the truth.

Bohdi huffs a laugh against the back of his neck and his arm tightens around him. "Yeah. I know."

For a long time after, they lie tangled up, Bohdi's arm heavy across Morgan's waist, Morgan's fingers laced through his, and neither of them speaks. The fire is dying and the room is warm and the silence between them is packed to the edges with everything Morgan has been carrying for years and has finally, recklessly, catastrophically set down.

Then Morgan tangles his fingers in Bohdi's braided hair and pulls him down and kisses him again, slow and deep, and Bohdi kisses him back with a tenderness that undoes Morgan completely.

"You want to fuck my mouth?" Morgan asks on a breath, already feeling Bohdi half hard again against his thigh.

"You're a fucking menace," Bohdi hisses against his mouth. "I've got to get back to my room. If someone sees me leaving your room in the morning⁠—"

Morgan laughs, bright and happy and entirely without shame. "You're the one who always caught them. Who's going to catch you?"

Bohdi's eyes light up, and he kisses him again, and there's a grin in it that Morgan can feel against his lips, broad and reckless and full of everything Morgan has ever wanted from him, and Morgan grins back and pulls him closer and does not let go.

Chapter 36

Bohdi

It's been three days since Bohdi lost his damned mind and fell into bed with his king's younger brother. Three days of Bohdi slipping into Morgan's room after dark and leaving before dawn, padding barefoot down the corridor with his boots in his hand, something he hasn't done since he was seventeen and sneaking out of the barracks.

He is extremely aware of the indignity.

He's a grown man. He's the king's second. He's commanded men in a dozen campaigns and killed more people than he can put names to. And yet he spent last night crouched beside the crown prince's bed at midnight trying to locate his own shirt in the dark while Morgan, entirely unhelpfully, laughed into his pillow and offered increasingly unhelpful suggestions about where it might be.

"It's under the chair," Morgan told him.

"There are three chairs."

"The one you threw me over."

"I threw you over two of them."

Bohdi found the shirt under the wrong chair, put it on inside out, didn't notice until he was halfway down the corridor, and had to duck into an alcove to fix it. A night guard walked past with a torch and a facial expression that suggested he had seen nothing and intended to continue seeing nothing for the foreseeable future.

They've fallen into a rhythm that is as reckless as it was inevitable.

Bohdi comes once the Keep quiets. He waits for the shift change. He knows the rotation better than the men who run it, has known it for years, and the gap between the late watch and the night watch is twelve minutes. Twelve minutes is more than enough time for a man who knows every corridor and stairwell in this building to move through it unseen. He reaches Morgan's door. He knocks and Morgan lets him in without a word. Just opens the door and steps aside and Bohdi kisses him before the latch has clicked shut.

They are not careful. They are not measured. They are two people who have a complete disregard for restraint.

Morgan is mouthy. Morgan is demanding. Morgan is sharp-tongued even in bed, a man who runs his mouth while Bohdi is inside him and who responds to being told to shut up by getting louder. The sheer, infuriating, breathtaking audacity of him is something Bohdi has no defense against and has stopped trying to build one. He has fucked a lot of people. He has fucked warriors and scholars and merchants and nobles and once, memorably, a visiting dignitary's translator in a supply closet during a trade negotiation. None of them talked to him the way Morgan does. None of them challenged him the way Morgan does, needled and provoked and pushed and pushed and pushed until Bohdi pinned him to something solid and shut him up with his mouth.

Bohdi is rediscovering that he laughs more in that room than he has in years. The kind of laugh that comes from being surprised by someone, by being delighted and infuriated and challenged all at once by a person who sees through every layer of him and likes what they find.

They talk in the dark afterward. They lie tangled together with the lamp burned low and the Keep silent around them, and they talk about Fenris and the Jakadi and the eastern scouts and the diplomatic approach and the succession crisis, because they cannot help being who they are even naked. Morgan's mind works at midnight the same way it works at noon, relentlessly, precisely, turning information into strategy, and Bohdi's mind works alongside it, the tactical counterweight, the logistical engine, and the two of them lying in the dark working through problems is the most natural thing in the world.

Then Morgan says something about the scout routes and shifts against him and his bare thigh presses against Bohdi's and the conversation derails spectacularly and Bohdi has him on his back again before either of them finishes the sentence.

Tonight it starts the way it always starts: with Morgan's mouth. Specifically, with Morgan standing at his desk in nothing but a loose sleep shirt, hair still damp from the bath, reading a scout report by lamplight when Bohdi comes through the door. He doesn't look up. He just says, "You're late," in the same tone he uses to note the weather, and when Bohdi crosses the room and puts a hand on the back of his neck and turns him around, Morgan looks up at him with those pale sharp eyes and says, "I was beginning to think you'd gotten lost. Shall I draw you a map next time? I know the Keep can be confusing for men of limited⁠—"

Bohdi kisses him to shut him up. It is becoming a pattern. Morgan provokes; Bohdi closes the distance. The kiss is hard and graceless and Morgan makes a sound against his mouth, a small, sharp intake of breath that goes straight through Bohdi. Then Morgan's hands are fisting in his shirt and pulling, hauling him closer, and the scout report crumples between them and neither of them notices or cares.

"I was reading that," Morgan says against his lips.

"You can read it later."